Palestinian Rights Champion Sarraj Dies of Cancer

Award-winning Palestinian human rights campaigner Iyad Sarraj has died of cancer aged 70, colleagues and relatives said on Wednesday.

"Dr Iyad Sarraj passed away last night," Tuesday, reported the website of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, which he founded in 1990.

"Dr Sarraj died in an Israeli hospital where he was admitted when his health deteriorated while suffering from cancer," a relative told Agence France Presse, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Born 1943 in Beersheva, in what was then British-ruled Palestine, his family was uprooted and fled to the Gaza Strip with the founding of Israel in 1948.

A psychiatrist, Sarraj became known for documenting the impact of conflict on children in the coastal Palestinian territory.

But it was primarily his efforts for peace with Israel and a non-violent resolution of the dispute which gained him international attention.

Gaza's Islamist Hamas rulers paid tribute to Sarraj in a statement calling him "the great Palestinian rights activist... dedicated to the service of the Palestinian people, to resistance to the Zionist occupation and to all forms of racism".

The Palestine Liberation Organisation praised him as "a great activist who left a deep imprint on the Palestinian struggle".

Sarraj received numerous awards, including the Olof Palme Prize in 2010 for having "revealed the destructive influence of repression on mental health".

"It is not me but the victims of violence, torture and war who are the real heroes," he told AFP in Gaza at the time.

He was also active in trying to promote rapprochement between Hamas and bitter rivals Fatah, chairing a reconciliation committee seeking to heal the six-year breach between the movements, so far without success.